Sounds like we have some work to do in getting the word out about Project 2025. Have shared it with a number of friends and family members and I know by their reaction, they are sharing also.
Here’s something for the underinformed: "The People’s Guide to Project 2025" 👇
It’s important to highlight Project 2025 nonstop as a voting choice, but that should also headline the fact that Republicans want to cut Medicare and Social Security — this is the main point that will hopefully wake up some of the MAGA types of voters who rely on these benefits.
Also, military vets will see massive cuts to benefits and medical care under Project 2025 and Republican follow up bills, if they take control of government.
It’s discomforting to note that Project 2025 with respect to reproductive health and education sounds like pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism on steroids.
While I agree that Project 2025 is an anathema to democracy, and this article is right to note that aspects of it are already law in some states, the Democrats have some things badly wrong too. Specifically, we need to stop ceding support for sex-based rights and boundaries to Republicans, who are weaponizing it.
I have written to my elected representatives and to the Harris campaign about this, and below is the text from one of those letters. If you share any of these concerns, please feel free to use any or all of the below language to write to your own representatives and candidates. If you don't share these concerns, I hope you will take a look at some of the resources I have indicated. There is a lot about these issues that is not well known, and it is hard to find credible sources from which to learn where things are going wrong. I have done, and continue to do my very best to do that, and the below comes out of that work:
I am writing as a longtime, generally progressive, Democrat who wants Kamala Harris and the entire Democratic Party to win this November. To achieve that, however, there is one thing on which the Democratic Party must change course. In his New York Times piece of July 23, 2024, “The Harris Campaign Begins,” David Leonhardt pointed to the area of my particular concern:
“U.S. liberals have adopted some positions on gender issues that are out of the mainstream. Doctors in Europe, for example, believe the scientific evidence doesn’t support gender transition hormone treatment for many children. Most Americans agree — while also opposing discrimination against trans people. Many prominent Democrats are well to the public’s left on this subject.”
The Democrats are losing longtime Democratic voters over the issue Leonhardt notes, along with other important issues related to the erosion of sex-based rights and boundaries of women and girls. Below I detail 5 issue areas for the Democratic Party’s consideration, together with recommended approaches and citations to resources.
Medical and Surgical Interventions for Minors with Sex- and Gender-Based Confusion
Issue: It has been widely noted that the profile of minors presenting to gender clinics, here and abroad, has vastly changed in recent years. This is resulting in many minors with complex psychosocial issues receiving medical and surgical interventions that are not appropriate to their needs.
Proposed Democratic Position: Pause provision of such care to minors (puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries) pending completion of a national systematic review. Models for such reviews include those that have been done in England (the Cass Review), Finland, and other European countries.
Resources: The Cass Review, https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/; Pamela Paul’s article in the New York Times on the Cass Review, “Why Is the U.S. Still Pretending We Know Gender-Affirming Care Works?”, to which Leonhardt links in his article.
Title IX
Issue: Biological girls and women are losing opportunities as the result of an increasing number of biological males competing in girls’ and women’s sports.
Proposed Democratic Position: Reserve girls’ and women’s sports only for biological girls and women and offer an “open” category in which anyone at all can compete, no matter how they self-identify.
Resources: Martina Navratilova and Kim Shasby Jones, who have researched, written, and spoken extensively on this, can point you to many useful resources.
K-12 Schools
Issue: Children are being introduced to ideas and concepts within the rubric of gender identity that do not comport with their developmental stages and that encourage dissociation from their biology.
Proposed Democratic Position: Put a moratorium on all legislation, regulatory, and public policy efforts that promote gender identity concepts in K-12 school materials, activities, and curricula. Allow individual schools/school districts and parents, without pressure to conform to any specific model, to ascertain the best way forward for their schools.
Health Care, Public Health, and Other Data Collection
Issue: Differences between the sexes are an important factor for analysis in many areas that social and health scientists address. These include, for example, demography, physical and mental health, crime, education, and employment. It is critical to retain biological sex as a data point for all such purposes.
Proposed Democratic Position: Wherever biological sex is pertinent, data collection will include biological sex as a separate and distinct data point.
Resource: “Why Do We Need Data on Sex?”, by Alice Sullivan, Kath Murray, and Lisa Mackenzie, in Sex and Gender, A Contemporary Reader.
Federal Equality Act (H.R. 15 and S. 5 118th Congress)
Issue: If the federal Equality Act passes as currently written, gender identity, under which biological males can self-identify as women, has the potential to supersede sex for all formerly sex-based rights and single-sex spaces (including, as examples, women’s and girls’ sports, women’s prisons, hospital wards, refuges for women from domestic violence, public changing rooms, and public toilets).
Proposed Democratic Position: Rather than, as now proposed, defining “sex” to include “gender identity,” amend the proposed legislation to add “gender identity” as a separate protected category, alongside “sex” and the other existing protected categories.
The Cass report is not exactly unbiased, it is heavily driven by the current politics of the UK, dressing up anti-trans propaganda in sympathetic language.
I would say Emily Bazelon's reporting on the attempt to create an unbiased "standard of care" is a much better starting point if you want to understand the realities of youth gender issues in the US.
Thanks for responding. I know we won't agree on this, and that's fine--the important thing is to have an open discussion. I really do recommend that those who have questions actually read the report itself, and also learn more about who Hilary Cass is and what her mandate was. She came to this with tremendous knowledge and expertise, but specifically without any presumptions or bias, and went only as far as the evidence accumulated in an assiduous process over a 4 year timeline led her and her team. It is a mistake to discount this work on claims of bias; that's simply not true. We would do well in the US to follow the lead of the UK Labour Government, which has evaluated the known evidence and changed course. Democrats here could learn a lot from how Wes Streeting, Labour's Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, is handling these fraught issues.
How do your proposals differ from the Christian nationalists? Other than you say “Let’s study it,” and they say, “Why study it? We know it’s stupid.” Are we to study it until everyone forgets about it, so we don’t have to deal with it? It just seems like a dodge, which is a complaint that independent voters have lodged at us Democrats for over a generation now. Perhaps we take a position and stick with it?
This is a lot of expertise that could or should be parsed by someone. Not sure David Leonhardt is the go to guy. Maybe J.K. Rowling is the best voice for the foot soldiers who believe that < 1/10 of 0.1 % should be taken to task for gender dysphoria. I suspect Harris has bigger fish to fry than a group that comprises a drop of water in an ocean. Maybe Harris loses because David Leonhardt thinks that supporting the rights of this minuscule group is so egregious that the American electorate will abandon her wholesale. Anything is possible. Btw, I had 4 physicians misdiagnose psoriasis before a natural-path figured it out. Definitely go to the AMA for all questions concerning something as complex as what you're talking about.
Hi, Susan: Thanks for responding. Yes, David Leonhardt is not the person with expertise here, but simply someone who has noted the concern, and he is right to do so. I think it is important for us as Democrats to recognize there are tensions between women’s and girls’ sex-based rights and boundaries and issues those who identify as trans face—and those tensions affect far more people than I think is often understood. Recognizing these tensions is the first step to addressing them in ways that are constructive—as opposed to weaponizing them, as is the right’s stock in trade—then working assiduously to become informed on the issues raised. In that regard, I do recommend taking a look at the resources I link. I’d suggest starting with the Cass Review Final Report.
I'm a liberal. Of course I will look at the Cass Review Final Report. As far as trans tensions actually affecting far more people than you think is often understood, (your words), is a GOP talking point. However 'often' it exists in the real world doesn't matter, if it happens once, it must be canvassed as a disqualifying issue if you actually support girls and women. I get it.
Susan, thanks for responding. Just FYI, I'm a solid, often progressive leaning, Democrat and I write from that perspective. When I noted at the outset that the GOP weaponizes these issues, its misuse of the framing you note is a good example. I appreciate that you've engaged, and one day, perhaps, we'll be somewhere at the same time and place and can talk person to person.
I am sure we both agree that the GOP will not solve these issues; they only use them to divide. That's why it's particularly important, at least as I see it, that we as Democrats do grapple honestly with the tensions. It's my belief that, if we do, they can all be addressed productively, if not always totally solved.
In this regard, I have had a couple wonderful, productive conversations recently, one with a D candidate for office, another with 2 of my D college friends, on the subject of placement of men who are trans in women's prisons. We quickly agreed on two things: one, that such men, along with gay men and other types of offenders who are at risk from male violence if housed in the general men's prison, need safe accommodation; two, that housing such men, most of whom are intact, in women's prisons is not a good solution. From there, we were able to move quickly to thinking about how a third, protective space for the at-risk men could be designed. That's the kind of conversations I am hoping can happen more often on our side of the aisle. Thanks again for weighing in!
The latest part of the right wing long game that's been going on since FDR's New Deal. Quietly install their functionaries into positions of power where they can misuse the features of our democracy to manipulate things as they wish and change laws, if possible. Trump unexpectedly winning in 2016 caused the timeline to speed up a little.
This focus on gender rigidness of male and female, hate on LGBT(or the lack of awareness of it), banning pornographic books is a reaction to all the progressive policies and acceptance of gender fluidness(which is too much of a philosophical question to be pushed on kids)... This is not extremism. This is a conservative push back(a bit hard right).
Great article!
Project 2025 needs more public exposure.
Sounds like we have some work to do in getting the word out about Project 2025. Have shared it with a number of friends and family members and I know by their reaction, they are sharing also.
Here’s something for the underinformed: "The People’s Guide to Project 2025" 👇
https://democracyforward.org/the-peoples-guide-to-project-2025/
This "Reject Project 2025" t-shirt is great, too 👇
https://libtees-2.creator-spring.com/listing/reject25
It’s important to highlight Project 2025 nonstop as a voting choice, but that should also headline the fact that Republicans want to cut Medicare and Social Security — this is the main point that will hopefully wake up some of the MAGA types of voters who rely on these benefits.
Also, military vets will see massive cuts to benefits and medical care under Project 2025 and Republican follow up bills, if they take control of government.
Vote blue up and down the ticket!
"LAVATORIES OF DEMOCRACY" nice...
It’s discomforting to note that Project 2025 with respect to reproductive health and education sounds like pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism on steroids.
While I agree that Project 2025 is an anathema to democracy, and this article is right to note that aspects of it are already law in some states, the Democrats have some things badly wrong too. Specifically, we need to stop ceding support for sex-based rights and boundaries to Republicans, who are weaponizing it.
I have written to my elected representatives and to the Harris campaign about this, and below is the text from one of those letters. If you share any of these concerns, please feel free to use any or all of the below language to write to your own representatives and candidates. If you don't share these concerns, I hope you will take a look at some of the resources I have indicated. There is a lot about these issues that is not well known, and it is hard to find credible sources from which to learn where things are going wrong. I have done, and continue to do my very best to do that, and the below comes out of that work:
I am writing as a longtime, generally progressive, Democrat who wants Kamala Harris and the entire Democratic Party to win this November. To achieve that, however, there is one thing on which the Democratic Party must change course. In his New York Times piece of July 23, 2024, “The Harris Campaign Begins,” David Leonhardt pointed to the area of my particular concern:
“U.S. liberals have adopted some positions on gender issues that are out of the mainstream. Doctors in Europe, for example, believe the scientific evidence doesn’t support gender transition hormone treatment for many children. Most Americans agree — while also opposing discrimination against trans people. Many prominent Democrats are well to the public’s left on this subject.”
The Democrats are losing longtime Democratic voters over the issue Leonhardt notes, along with other important issues related to the erosion of sex-based rights and boundaries of women and girls. Below I detail 5 issue areas for the Democratic Party’s consideration, together with recommended approaches and citations to resources.
Medical and Surgical Interventions for Minors with Sex- and Gender-Based Confusion
Issue: It has been widely noted that the profile of minors presenting to gender clinics, here and abroad, has vastly changed in recent years. This is resulting in many minors with complex psychosocial issues receiving medical and surgical interventions that are not appropriate to their needs.
Proposed Democratic Position: Pause provision of such care to minors (puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries) pending completion of a national systematic review. Models for such reviews include those that have been done in England (the Cass Review), Finland, and other European countries.
Resources: The Cass Review, https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/; Pamela Paul’s article in the New York Times on the Cass Review, “Why Is the U.S. Still Pretending We Know Gender-Affirming Care Works?”, to which Leonhardt links in his article.
Title IX
Issue: Biological girls and women are losing opportunities as the result of an increasing number of biological males competing in girls’ and women’s sports.
Proposed Democratic Position: Reserve girls’ and women’s sports only for biological girls and women and offer an “open” category in which anyone at all can compete, no matter how they self-identify.
Resources: Martina Navratilova and Kim Shasby Jones, who have researched, written, and spoken extensively on this, can point you to many useful resources.
K-12 Schools
Issue: Children are being introduced to ideas and concepts within the rubric of gender identity that do not comport with their developmental stages and that encourage dissociation from their biology.
Proposed Democratic Position: Put a moratorium on all legislation, regulatory, and public policy efforts that promote gender identity concepts in K-12 school materials, activities, and curricula. Allow individual schools/school districts and parents, without pressure to conform to any specific model, to ascertain the best way forward for their schools.
Resource: Sex Matters is an excellent resource on this issue (and many others): https://sex-matters.org/posts/publications/sex-and-gender-model-policy-for-schools/
Health Care, Public Health, and Other Data Collection
Issue: Differences between the sexes are an important factor for analysis in many areas that social and health scientists address. These include, for example, demography, physical and mental health, crime, education, and employment. It is critical to retain biological sex as a data point for all such purposes.
Proposed Democratic Position: Wherever biological sex is pertinent, data collection will include biological sex as a separate and distinct data point.
Resource: “Why Do We Need Data on Sex?”, by Alice Sullivan, Kath Murray, and Lisa Mackenzie, in Sex and Gender, A Contemporary Reader.
Federal Equality Act (H.R. 15 and S. 5 118th Congress)
Issue: If the federal Equality Act passes as currently written, gender identity, under which biological males can self-identify as women, has the potential to supersede sex for all formerly sex-based rights and single-sex spaces (including, as examples, women’s and girls’ sports, women’s prisons, hospital wards, refuges for women from domestic violence, public changing rooms, and public toilets).
Proposed Democratic Position: Rather than, as now proposed, defining “sex” to include “gender identity,” amend the proposed legislation to add “gender identity” as a separate protected category, alongside “sex” and the other existing protected categories.
Resource: “Sex, Gender, and Equality in the United States: Confusion, Conflict, and Consequences,” by Callie H. Burt, in Sex and Gender, A Contemporary Reader. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qy4bqn4cftqwv5iav77yi/Burt_2024_Chapter-9-EA.pdf?rlkey=xcpve9naiwqfh942ebwcfl9f1&e=1&dl=0
The Cass report is not exactly unbiased, it is heavily driven by the current politics of the UK, dressing up anti-trans propaganda in sympathetic language.
https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/integrity-project_cass-response.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/opinion/cass-report-trans-kids.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ik4.qUrL.UnrhJaaj4wWT&smid=url-share
I would say Emily Bazelon's reporting on the attempt to create an unbiased "standard of care" is a much better starting point if you want to understand the realities of youth gender issues in the US.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/magazine/gender-therapy.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ik4.B61t.OnX7M6Y2mBaj&smid=url-share
(Of course Bazelon got attacked from _both_ the left and right for that piece.)
Thanks for responding. I know we won't agree on this, and that's fine--the important thing is to have an open discussion. I really do recommend that those who have questions actually read the report itself, and also learn more about who Hilary Cass is and what her mandate was. She came to this with tremendous knowledge and expertise, but specifically without any presumptions or bias, and went only as far as the evidence accumulated in an assiduous process over a 4 year timeline led her and her team. It is a mistake to discount this work on claims of bias; that's simply not true. We would do well in the US to follow the lead of the UK Labour Government, which has evaluated the known evidence and changed course. Democrats here could learn a lot from how Wes Streeting, Labour's Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, is handling these fraught issues.
How do your proposals differ from the Christian nationalists? Other than you say “Let’s study it,” and they say, “Why study it? We know it’s stupid.” Are we to study it until everyone forgets about it, so we don’t have to deal with it? It just seems like a dodge, which is a complaint that independent voters have lodged at us Democrats for over a generation now. Perhaps we take a position and stick with it?
Hi, Gary. Thanks for responding. See my note to Susan.
This is a lot of expertise that could or should be parsed by someone. Not sure David Leonhardt is the go to guy. Maybe J.K. Rowling is the best voice for the foot soldiers who believe that < 1/10 of 0.1 % should be taken to task for gender dysphoria. I suspect Harris has bigger fish to fry than a group that comprises a drop of water in an ocean. Maybe Harris loses because David Leonhardt thinks that supporting the rights of this minuscule group is so egregious that the American electorate will abandon her wholesale. Anything is possible. Btw, I had 4 physicians misdiagnose psoriasis before a natural-path figured it out. Definitely go to the AMA for all questions concerning something as complex as what you're talking about.
Hi, Susan: Thanks for responding. Yes, David Leonhardt is not the person with expertise here, but simply someone who has noted the concern, and he is right to do so. I think it is important for us as Democrats to recognize there are tensions between women’s and girls’ sex-based rights and boundaries and issues those who identify as trans face—and those tensions affect far more people than I think is often understood. Recognizing these tensions is the first step to addressing them in ways that are constructive—as opposed to weaponizing them, as is the right’s stock in trade—then working assiduously to become informed on the issues raised. In that regard, I do recommend taking a look at the resources I link. I’d suggest starting with the Cass Review Final Report.
I'm a liberal. Of course I will look at the Cass Review Final Report. As far as trans tensions actually affecting far more people than you think is often understood, (your words), is a GOP talking point. However 'often' it exists in the real world doesn't matter, if it happens once, it must be canvassed as a disqualifying issue if you actually support girls and women. I get it.
Susan, thanks for responding. Just FYI, I'm a solid, often progressive leaning, Democrat and I write from that perspective. When I noted at the outset that the GOP weaponizes these issues, its misuse of the framing you note is a good example. I appreciate that you've engaged, and one day, perhaps, we'll be somewhere at the same time and place and can talk person to person.
I am sure we both agree that the GOP will not solve these issues; they only use them to divide. That's why it's particularly important, at least as I see it, that we as Democrats do grapple honestly with the tensions. It's my belief that, if we do, they can all be addressed productively, if not always totally solved.
In this regard, I have had a couple wonderful, productive conversations recently, one with a D candidate for office, another with 2 of my D college friends, on the subject of placement of men who are trans in women's prisons. We quickly agreed on two things: one, that such men, along with gay men and other types of offenders who are at risk from male violence if housed in the general men's prison, need safe accommodation; two, that housing such men, most of whom are intact, in women's prisons is not a good solution. From there, we were able to move quickly to thinking about how a third, protective space for the at-risk men could be designed. That's the kind of conversations I am hoping can happen more often on our side of the aisle. Thanks again for weighing in!
The latest part of the right wing long game that's been going on since FDR's New Deal. Quietly install their functionaries into positions of power where they can misuse the features of our democracy to manipulate things as they wish and change laws, if possible. Trump unexpectedly winning in 2016 caused the timeline to speed up a little.
This focus on gender rigidness of male and female, hate on LGBT(or the lack of awareness of it), banning pornographic books is a reaction to all the progressive policies and acceptance of gender fluidness(which is too much of a philosophical question to be pushed on kids)... This is not extremism. This is a conservative push back(a bit hard right).